Welles Marathon: The Third Man (1949)

 I wish I could have watched this movie in a different context.  As you can tell by the title, I am doing an Orson Welles marathon.  Orson Welles' appearance in this movie is supposed to be a surprise.  Me, being on an Orson Welles marathon, was waiting for him to appear and it became fairly obvious what role he would be playing when the movie continued without his presence.

Now, it must be said that most people who watch this movie know Orson Welles is in it.  But I think there's a difference between that and specifically watching a movie because of Orson Welles.  Which is to say, you can forget he's even in the movie if you're just picking this movie because it's a great movie.  And then when he appears, you're genuinely surprised. 

Theoretically anyway.  I bring this up because of what Roger Ebert wrote about the film in one of his Great Movies entries, because it was absolutely not true for me:

"As for Harry Lime: He allows Orson Welles to make the most famous entrance in the history of the movies, and one of the most famous speeches. By the time Lime finally appears we have almost forgotten Welles is even *in* the movie. "

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Welles hasn't been in the movie yet and he probably isn't in a bit part, so Welles is Harry Lime, so Harry Lime is actually alive.  Which does not ruin the movie - a movie ruined by knowing the twist is not a good movie - but I think it did take something away from the experience of watching The Third Man.

One thing is clear: it would absolutely suck to direct a movie with Orson Welles in it.  No matter what his involvement, rumors persisted that he actually directed the movie.  And that's to say nothing of his, shall we say, prima donna tendencies.  I don't believe he had any issues with the latter on this movie, but there was rampant speculation that Carol Reed did not direct this movie. 

Basically, Reed did such a good job directing this movie - and taking a significant amount of influence form Welles - that Welles just had to have actually direct this movie.  Or so goes the theory.  The fact that it could have been directed by Welles is used as proof that it was directed by him.  I am not making this up, this is an actual theory.

Despite my suggestion that watching this blind about the casting would have been better, I think I'll enjoy this movie more on rewatches.  It just feels like a movie where I can focus less on the plot, and just get lost in the movie.

One thing that I'm not really sure I liked is the score.  Which I think is sacrilege to say and maybe I'll appreciate it more on subsequent viewings, but I was thrown for a loop at the famous score.  I'll reference Ebert again who said there has never been a more perfect score for a movie, but I don't think I agree. 

Maybe I'll change my opinion of course, but the music doesn't really fit the tone of a film noir.  Part of me respects that the score is very original and different and hell, I actually don't like most music scores from 1940 movies.  Too over the top, too loud.  That's not a problem here at all.  But I don't know, it just felt out of place at times.

There's not much new I can add to what has to be a wealth of film criticism on The Third Man.  The cinematography is great and adds to the atmosphere of the movie.  The atmosphere and sense of place is maybe the greatest thing about this movie.  It feels like a very specific place and time and the movie could not be set anytime else.  You can't say that about many movies.

It's a little surprising the writer of the movie wanted a different ending (and he wrote a different ending in the book).   This is not a movie that should have a happy ending.  Absolutely the right choice from Reed, and even writer Graham Greene has said Reed has been proven "triumphantly right."

And even though Welles did not direct it, it wouldn't be a Welles movie without some studio fuckery.  Apparently eleven minutes were replaced in the American version, although I'm pretty sured I watched the version with those eleven minutes.

I'm excited to watch this again soon and I genuinely think I'll gain an even greater appreciation for it.  I have two more Welles movies to cover and both are I believe considered classics.

Welles Marathon: Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Throughout his career on the stage and behind the camera, Orson Welles returned to Shakespeare numerous times.  It makes sense.  One of the first things he did as a professional was direct a stage adaptation of Macbeth with an all African-American cast.  He directed it at just 20-years-old.  A couple years later, Welles intended to stage The Five Kings, which was taken from several Shakespeare plays.  Welles blew it off, went drinking, and never went to rehearsals so the play was a disaster and scrapped soon.

Elements from that original play formulated into a reworked Chimes at Midnight 20 years later.  He didn't really seem to treat the revamped play any more seriously than he did the Five Kings, ending the play's run prematurely because he was bored with it and always intended it for it to be a rehearsal for the movie.  He scrambled to find funding for this, eventually finding it but only with the promise of making A Treasure Island as well.  He never made it and never intended to make it, lying to the producer to get A Chimes at Midnight made.

Of the three Shakespeare films that Welles made, Chimes at Midnight is easily my favorite.  For one thing, the production value is better than the previous two.  He clearly got more money to make this than Othello and while Hamlet had a good and comparable budget, technology presumably improved a lot from 1948 to 1965.  

But I think the bigger reason that I like it more is that it just feels much more original.  I've seen a few movie adaptations of Hamlet.  I don't believe I've seen any movie adaptations of the Shakespeare works he takes to make this movie.  According to Wikipedia, he takes from five different Shakespeare plays.  

And really, it doesn't matter if I had seen a movie adaptation from any one of those movies.  Because the play is a combination of texts from those plays, but it's not in chronological order and he inserts scenes from one play into another play.  It would have felt original even if I had been intimately familiar with Shakespeare's works.

Despite the fact that taking scenes from one play and combining them into scenes from another play  could make the story incoherent and hard to follow, it has a clear story on its own.  Because every line of dialogue is directly lifted from Shakespeare, you could in fact mistake this movie as an adaptation of the nonexistent "Chimes at Midnight," but of course Shakespeare never wrote such a play.

At its core, Shakespeare stories are effective, because amidst all the plot, the story is simple.  And that's the case here.  This is the relationship between Falstaff, previously a joke in Shakespeare productions, and Prince Hal.  And the story seems engineered to make the climax of the movie the rejection of Falstaff by Hal.

And it's effective!  Welles is very good at Falstaff.  One thing I've learned from the Welles movies I've watched is that Welles is good even when he's not trying.  He's trying here.  He's able to gain you sympathy for him even while you understand that really, Hal is doing the right thing by rejecting him.  Keith Baxter is good, although I admit when I found out that Anthony Perkins wanted to do this role, I couldn't help but think it'd be better with him.  But alas, that's unfair to Baxter.

Apparently, and I say apparently, because I am reading about it, but the lengthy battle sequence was very influential.  And it's well filmed.  But I'll admit that had I not read about it, I would not really have thought twice about the battle scene.  It's sometimes really hard to put your mind in 1965 and understand that nobody was filming battle sequences like that.  

Usually, I think if a film is the first to do something, even if films copy it to death, that shines through in the material.  My best example is It Happened One Night, which despite the fact that every romcom in existence copies this movie, it doesn't really feel cliché because it did it so well, and yes first.  So I confess, I was impressed by the filmmaking but didn't really recognize it as the influential scene it apparently is.

Orson Welles thought Chimes at Midnight was his best work, and along with The Magnificent Ambersons, his most personal film.  I disagree with him on that.  I still think Citizen Kane was the best, however, I will not argue with Vincent Camby of the New York Times that it may very well by the greatest Shakespeare movie ever.  Which, to be completely fair, is not necessarily saying much coming from me, person who has trouble with Shakespeare movies. 

But I will say this: it's the rare Shakespeare movie to feel wholly original to me, because well it's hard to be original when adapting someone else's work.  And Shakespeare has been adapted more than anyone in history.  While Hamlet and Othello certainly have great critical reputations, I have no desire to see them again.  But I will want to watch Chimes at Midnight again.

4/4 stars

Queen and Slim Review

I was excited for Queen & Slim.  I really was.  The reviews were pretty good, but that's not why I was excited.  This is a great premise.  A law abiding black couple find themselves on the wrong side of the law after killing a police officer in self defense.  The movie is the chase and escape.  I was pretty sure I was going to like it.

And then I watched it.  Five minutes into the movie, the scene where they kill a police officer in self-defense happens.  I was surprised that the movie did that so quickly, and realized that the next two hours - the movie is 132 minutes long - needed to be spent on them avoiding the police.  That's when I was first worried.  That is a lot of time.  Bonnie and Clyde is just 111 minutes.  Thelma and Louise is a similar length, but the killing doesn't actually happen until 20 minutes in.

And my worries were largely correct.  This is not a movie that supports its length.  It could easily be shorter and it would be a better movie if it were.  This movie seems completely unconcerned with time.  It is not clear how far they go, how long time has passed, anything.  In one scene, I was completely surprised that they were evidently in Kentucky.  When did they leave Ohio?  Simple scenes were they pass "Leaving Ohio" on the highway or something to that effect would have helped.  Also even an attempt at establishing a timeline.  The movie is concerned with neither geography nor time.

The characters also seem remarkably unconcerned with getting caught, seeing as they make a million stops along the way.  They stop at a fast food place, accidentally hit a guy, take him to the hospital (a completely ridiculous scene in my opinion).  They go to a bar for a couple hours.  They visit a grave.  They stop in the middle of the completely empty highway to ride a horse.  They playfully stick their head out the window on the highway, because again there are no cars around them.  On the highway.  In the middle of the day.

When they visit "Queen's" cousin, there's very little tension when the police show up, which... feels like they did something wrong there.  He asks for a warrant, he says he'll get it, and then they just easily leave.  Wouldn't a cop, with a person being as suspicious as the cousin, call for a warrant and just stay at the property while someone else gets it?  Also, the couple at this point is extremely famous and he's her cousin.  This information hasn't been passed to the New Orleans police?

But, the main issue, the thing that would forgive all other things, is that Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith have no chemistry.  At the beginning of the movie, neither character likes each other and they are apparently so convincing at that that when they do start to fall in love, it feels forced as hell.  This is the soul of the movie.  If you buy into the romance, the plot problems dissipate.  If you don't, the plot problems amplify.

And I just didn't think the script or the actors sold their growing feelings for each other at all.  Considering the climax of the movie requires you to have an investment of them as a couple, no investment means the whole movie fails for you.  I think it's really that simple.  If you buy into them as a couple, the movie probably works.  If you don't, well there's really not much else to connect to on this movie.

Waithe and director Melina Matsoukas wanted to make an important movie.  This is very obvious.  I don't even think they would deny that.  But they were so concerned with making an important movie, they forgot the most important thing about movies: make it good.

Here's the ironic thing.  By emphasizing how important it was, the movie stopped being a movie and started being a message.  This is no clearer than the scene where the two characters finally hook up and they intercut that with... a protest.  Which was a very strange decision.  Honestly they could have scrapped the whole protest scene and what that entailed (you'll know what I'm referring to if you've seen it).  The kid wasn't given enough screen time for that to feel like anything but the movie delivering a message.  I guess they felt like they needed it to be intercut with a sex scene is because the movie is otherwise completely from Queen & Slim's perspective.  But it was a strange choice.

Queen & Slim is a deeply disappointing movie.  There's not much tension and the plot is ridiculous, but not in an entertaining way, just in a way that doesn't resemble how real life works.  The central couple lacks chemistry and the movie is boring.  It's here where I note that this movie got good reviews, so I am just one opinion of many.  But I truly don't think it's a good movie.

1.5/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Trial (1962)

I'll be honest.  I was not expecting a parallel with Steven Soderbergh at all in this marathon.  In my Soderbergh marathon, I covered Kafka, which was Soderbergh's second movie.  Part of that movie was based on The Trial, one of Kafka's most well-known novels.  And of course, this movie, which came further into Welles career, was based entirely on the novel The Trial.

In both cases, I feel not entirely qualified to judge the movie.  Because both movies seem largely to depend on mood, and that mood is Kafkaesque, a mood I'm not necessarily in tune to, being mostly unfamiliar with the author's work.  I suppose I should read The Trial and watch these movies again and then maybe I'll feel more qualified.

But... that's not what movies are about!  The vast majority of people will never have read the novel, short story, or comic book that a movie is based on, and they're forced to judge the movie on its own merits, not with a preexisting knowledge.  So I can't take that cop-out and just be done with this movie.

Of the two, I think Orson Welles is the more successful movie.  I think it helps that he is just adapting the novel straight while Soderbergh is sort of crafting an original narrative.  There's more of a singular purpose that propels the movie forward, which is Josef K. trying to figure out what crime he's being accused of so he can defend himself.

If there's a weakness in this movie, I think it's inherent in the material.  Which is to say, it's the point.  The movie is almost incoherent about what exactly is happening, but well I feel like that's what the movie is trying to do.  Josef K. has no idea what's going on, and we're just thrust into his world and the absolute insanity of what's happening to him.

Basically, the movie is a mostly faithful adaptation of the novel.  I mean I imagine.  I haven't read it.  But I can see how it'd be easier to portray confusion when you're reading about the perspective of Josef K as opposed to seeing it on screen.  So I think Welles did about the best he could with putting us in the mind of someone who is rightfully paranoid and lost.

I don't really understand the women though.  I know it's in the novel.  But he encounters three separate women who appear to want to fuck him.  Why?  I'm sure there's a reason.  He had some sort of platonic or otherwise relationship with his neighbor, so that one is easy enough to explain.  The others?  Kafka appears to be saying something here but what I do not know.  I had a similar problem with Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, where everyone wanted to fuck Tom Cruise.

You can tell this is well-directed.  Not that the narrative really needed the push, but the camera angles add to the uneasy feeling of the movie.  Lots and lots of disorienting camera angles to let you know something's not right.  It certainly adds to the tension of the film.

As for Welles performance, it's about as expected.  At this point in his career, he could be menacing in a bed, and that's exactly what he is.  He had that kind of presence and voice that he didn't really need to do much but be there and talk and you were afraid of him.  Which reportedly transferred to real life whenever he was on set with certain actors, so clearly he just had an intimidating presence about him.  Which was used quite effectively in his movies.

But the real star in the movie is Anthony Perkins, a couple years after Pyscho pigeonholed his career.  He plays a twitchy, nervous guy - nothing like Norman Bates - and he's very good.  I know he was not happy about the way his career developed post-Pyscho, but he also said this role was one of the highlights of his career.

The interesting thing about The Trial is that at first, it basically looks like a filmed stage play.  The first scene is quite long.  He spends time asking the cops what he's being charged with, and then he talks to his two neighbors, and the whole thing lasts like 20 minutes and it appears the 20 minutes is meant to be roughly 20 minutes on screen too.  And as he starts going to new locations, the camera angles start being disorienting.

Anyway, I wish I could say I loved watching this more, but without a specific connection to the novel it's based on, I did not.  I just thought it was a well-made film that I believe was essentially true to the novel, and I think that's all you can ask for in an adaptation.

3.5/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Magnificent Ambersons

The making of Citizen Kane is a fairy tale.  Orson Welles, having reached the top of his game in the theater and on the radio, was given unlimited control and a huge budget to make Citizen Kane at 25-years-old.  He never experienced anything like that again in his career, starting with his second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons.

Things started well enough, but the biggest problem was that he conceded control over the final cut, which he did not do for Citizen Kane.  So when he had to leave the country to make a film as a part of the Good Neighbor Policy, RKO Radio Pictures took control from him.  His original 135 minute cut of the movie turned into an 88 minute movie with a different ending.

Here's the kicker: it was probably a better movie than Welles' original movie.  There is of course no way to tell for sure.  After the film was received poorly, editor Robert Wise cut 7 minutes from the movie and it was shown again to a poor response.  RKO took over editing at this point, asked Robert Wise and the assistant director to do reshoots, including a new ending, and it ended up as the 88 minute version available now.

Wise, who himself was a pretty good director in his own right (which happened after this movie), says the original cut was not better than the newly edited version.  It seems to me that the biggest beef people have with the edited version is a happy ending.  Welles did not have a happy ending.  The book the movie is based on, however, did have a happy ending.

As it stands, you can't really tell that this movie was supposed to be over two hours long, which is astonishing to me.  If I had no idea of the backstory, I would have thought this was Welles' vision.  There truly is no disconnect here.  Okay maybe the ending is a little weird, since it's heavily foreshadowed it won't be a happy one.  

Okay, so since this review may be for people who've never seen it, I'll explain the plot.  A wealthy family sees its fortunes decline during the time of the advent of the automobile.  You see a boy and girl loved each other, but the boy made a fool of himself one time, and then she decided to never see him again and she married someone she didn't love.  Certainly not a plot that you could really make nowadays that's for sure.

So roughly 20 years later, George Amberson, the only child of the loveless marriage, is spoiled and generally unpleasant.  At a huge party, the boy who loved the girl had since married, had a kid, and had his wife die.  George instantly takes to his daugher, Lucy, but hates her father, Eugene.  Eventually, George's father dies, and Eugene and his mother look like they might get together, with both being available, but George is a spoiled brat and lets it be known he does not approve.  Which is a thing that mattered then.

So that's what happens.  And it's foreshadowed, hell outright stated, that George will "get his comeuppance" which largely seems to happen until the surprise happy ending.  Here's the thing: I think that A) the happy ending isn't really that happy and B) is plausible.

So spoilers, but this is an 88-year-old movie, so I feel like the window has passed for you to be mad about spoilers.  So the mother dies as a result of George's petulance, and this causes him to change.  He didn't see the point of working, now he wants to work for a good cause.  He then seriously injures himself in an automobile accident.

Eugene, who truly loved his mother, decides to take after the boy, because well that's what a man who loves someone would do.  Also Lucy and George are implied to have reconciled and eventually gotten together.  But the evidence for this is: she visits him in the hospital.  We don't even see their reunion scene. 

If this were a more modern movie, there would be doubt about the fate of Lucy and George's relationship, no question.  And I don't mean if it were filmed differently, I mean if it were filmed exactly the same way.  She visits him in the hospital.  That's the entire basis for imagining a relationship when there previously was none.  Only in the context of happy endings always happening in 1942 is there no doubt.  And the music.  But you could have sweeping, romantic music in 2020 and there would still be doubt about their future.

Anyway, my only point is that since George does change and has a comeuppance of sorts, the happy-ish ending doesn't feel cheap.  So whether or not this is the vision Welles had, doesn't matter to me.  The movie still works.

Aside from that, the one huge Welles influence is the amazing party scene where George and Lucy first chat, and the camera follows them as they walk throughout the party.  In the background, while they're chatting, the party still happens.  And actually, I was under the mistaken impression their conversation was one long shot, and I think that's a testament to how effectively he inserts us into that scene.

I'm actually glad I visited this after I had already seen most of Welles' filmography.  Because it wouldn't be immediately apparent how much of an aberration this movie is in his resume.  It's really nothing like anything else he's ever done.  And I wouldn't have quite appreciated that if I had watched this after Citizen Kane, in order of when they were made.  This is no Citizen Kane, but it's one of his best movies.

3.5/4 stars